Make HDD access Wireless

S

santoshwe

Disciple
Hi Friends,

I have a 1 TB hdd with a hdd dock. I would like to make this accessable wirelessly so that I can access this from my laptop/desktop/tablet etc. Is there a way to do this?

I have a a old netbook lying around not used. Is there any software by which i can connect this HDD to this laptop and make it accessable wireless through the laptop wifi?

Or is there any other solution? Please advise

Thanks
 
I just make the folders which i want accessible shared and use es file explorer on my phone to stream movies to my phone.
 
santoshwe said:
I have a a old netbook lying around not used. Is there any software by which i can connect this HDD to this laptop and make it accessable wireless through the laptop wifi?
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When you say the HDD has a dock what sort of interface does it have, is this like a casing with USB or ethernet.

If its USB, then does the netbook allow the USB to be connected to it. Does the netbook have an ethernet interface ?

Connect the netbook via ethernet to your router. Then just windows share.

It really depends what you want, just streaming or transferring up as well. And what kind of files.
 
blr_p said:
When you say the HDD has a dock what sort of interface does it have, is this like a casing with USB or ethernet.

If its USB, then does the netbook allow the USB to be connected to it. Does the netbook have an ethernet interface ?

Connect the netbook via ethernet to your router. Then just windows share.

It really depends what you want, just streaming or transferring up as well. And what kind of files.
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HDD dock has only USB interface and netbook has USB port and ethernet port. We can connect HDD to netbook thru USB. I want to copy files to and for to the HDD. That is watch movies, listen to songs etc as well as copy files into HDD.
 
santoshwe said:
HDD dock has only USB interface and netbook has USB port and ethernet port. We can connect HDD to netbook through USB.
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Hardware setup

HDD----(usb)----->netbook----(ethernet)----->router <-------((((wi-fi)))------mobiles,desktop,laptop etc

ethernet from netbook to the router is better than wi-fi from netbook to the router as you will halve your transmission speeds otherwise due to two wireless hops instead of one.

Software.
DLNA server on the netbook, either servio or Llink.
DLNA client like Bubble pnp client on the androids & XBMC on desktop or laptop.

Bear in mind, you will only be able to stream one HD movie at a time, or two SD, that's it before your wifi bandwidth is exceeded. DLNA will give you better throughput than SMB with streaming as it has less overhead than SMB.

FTP server on the netbook. Any ftp client on androids, desktop, laptop. FTP is much faster for file transfer than SMB windows sharing over wifi.

santoshwe said:
I want to copy files to and for to the HDD. That is watch movies, listen to songs etc as well as copy files into HDD.
Click to expand...
You can stream music or movies via dlna, it will work upto HD. Full HD will not work very well, might in some cases but not reliable.

I see no reason to use SMB ie windows sharing at all other than convenience or for small files and if you are ready to take a transfer speed hit.
 
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Thanks blr_p. I tried the DLNA server and client configuration and it works perfectly. But could not get the FTP to work. Using filezilla ftp server. My server is WIN7 64 Bit and I have laptop which is win xp 32 bit. Installed the filezilla client in laptop. I could not access server from the laptop. Could this be a 64 bit 32 bit issue?

Thanks
 
Check for firewalls on the machine where the ftp server is installed. You have to allow port 21 (default for ftp or whatever custom port you have set).

Make sure you use a static private ip for the server, Don't use DHPCP otherwise the ip address will keep changing.

ftp client needs to use active connections if there is a firewall otherwise passive.
 
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As an extension of the above mentioned questions and solutions, will setting up a DLNA server and client allow me to make changes on either file system? Meaning can I cut/copy/paste files to and from and also within either device?

Does setting up a shared drive and accessing it through ES File Explorer do what I asked?
 
Not either only on the device where the server is installed. Provided you allow write permission in the folder setting. otherwise its default read only.

That is clients can modify on the server.

To do it the other way requires an additional server on the client. I've not had to do this much, usually i just drop whatever on the server and pull from the client. Simpler.
 
I have a NetGear router that allows connecting USB devices. I can attach a hard disk to it and access the files from any connected device by typing \\router from the device.
 
blr_p said:
Not either only on the device where the server is installed. Provided you allow write permission in the folder setting. otherwise its default read only.
That is clients can modify on the server.
To do it the other way requires an additional server on the client. I've not had to do this much, usually i just drop whatever on the server and pull from the client. Simpler.
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Thanks for the response. Yeah I don't see myself doing much writing on the server end either.

Now I am going to ask you a few questions that fall within the parameters of this thread - Make HDD Access Wireless. If not then we can move the discussion to PM/another thread.

Here is my plan -
Make one 450GB partition on my 1TB secondary HDD a shared drive/file and media server. I would like to access the stored files over wireless home network on my tablet, phone, and Smart TV. It will be one stream at a time. On the phone and tablet, however, I want the ability to transfer those files onto the device's flash memory for offline access. Write ability on the server/shared drive from the mobile device would be an advantage but not a necessity.
What do you recommend? How should I go about it?
 
phoenix844884 said:
Thanks for the response. Yeah I don't see myself doing much writing on the server end either.
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Actually, you will be doing the writing/modifying there, as its the file server. If you need to.

If you use mobiles to download and then want to upload/transfer to the server you will be writing to the server. Bear in mind DLNA does not allow writing its mostly reading. You read or stream from a DLNA server. You write or upload to a ftp or smb server (windows shared folder).

the mobile running ES file explorer is the client. You don't do much writing on the client end.

When you said either way i thought you wanted to push to the mobiles. Traditionally you pull with them.

phoenix844884 said:
Now I am going to ask you a few questions that fall within the parameters of this thread - Make HDD Access Wireless. If not then we can move the discussion to PM/another thread.

Here is my plan -
Make one 450GB partition on my 1TB secondary HDD a shared drive/file and media server. I would like to access the stored files over wireless home network on my tablet, phone, and Smart TV. It will be one stream at a time. On the phone and tablet, however, I want the ability to transfer those files onto the device's flash memory for offline access. Write ability on the server/shared drive from the mobile device would be an advantage but not a necessity.
What do you recommend? How should I go about it?
Click to expand...
use bubble pnp on the clients, you can download files from the dlna server to the client. It will be N150 speeds though. Download speed via DLNA or ftp is similar.

Your smart tv unless it has android will only be streaming unless it also has a facility to download via dlna.
 
So, Servio/Llink on the PC and Bubble pnp on the androids should give me streaming on my end devices and allow me to pull content to the device's flash memory?

Is there any other combination that you recommend? Any advantages of going DLNA over setting up shares and SMB?
 
phoenix844884 said:
So, Servio/Llink on the PC and Bubble pnp on the androids should give me streaming on my end devices and allow me to pull content to the device's flash memory?
Click to expand...
yes

phoenix844884 said:
Is there any other combination that you recommend? Any advantages of going DLNA over setting up shares and SMB?
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Depends on the clients and the nature of the network.

For streaming to mobiles I found DLNA to work well. DLNA works over HTTP which has less overhead than going over SMB. DLNA isn't used for modifying content on the server from the client. For that you use SMB. You can also use ES file explorer to stream or download.

For windows clients, i've found its quite hard to find any capable DLNA clients, XBMC is about the only one that works reliably. if the client is windows then using SMB is ok. The lack of suitable DLNA clients for windows makes me think the difference isn't much, certainly not over wired connections.

But if your clients aren't windows then i think SMB implementations might not be as efficient as DLNA. And with mobiles you're constrained with N150 wifi.

When i was figuring out how to stream stuff i was looking for the most efficient way to do it. Files have different peak rates. if the peak rates exceeds your bandwidth then you will get skipping. So here the difference between something that works or not can be a few Mb/s. You won't notice unless you use a file that's close to your networks limit. If you're streaming HD, most files work. Full HD will be more problematic. Some files work because they just fall within your limits others will not. So if you've got the biggest limit possible them you increase your chances.

Now if all you do is download the file to view offline then its best to just use ftp. Fastest transfer speed to & fro. 30 yr old reliable tech. If you're not streaming than there is no need for DLNA. But if you want to stream sometimes & download other times then use DLNA. But i'd like not to have to download anything to begin with unless forced to. Prefer to stream whenever possible. You don't have to worry about local storage because the player uses a rolling buffer, its just stream and forget. No clean up afterwards.

Fastest possible transfer is to use usb, but you can see this can become a bit of a hassle after a while.
 
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Simple way to see the difference between SMB & ftp. Do a file copy.

In my testing i found ftp to be 3 times faster. I ain't using smb to stream HD.
 
Alright, after rigorous testing DLNA works just great for both the Smart TV as well as mobile and tablets. SMB is too slow for my liking, and while it streams content just fine I would certainly like a better service.

So if I set up a FTP server on my media storage partition it will obviously allow me to copy over files from the PC to mobile devices, but will that allow me to stream HD videos too? Is there any tweaking that I need to do or any secondary apps I need to run together with the FTP client?
 
dice player is the only app that i know off that can stream over ftp. No need for an ftp client. But dice can't do DLNA. So if you don't like dice then you won't be able to stream over ftp. Check if dice allows to download the entire clip, but i know it can stream over ftp.

Try random access along the clips timeline, tap on various points and see how quickly it responds. I think DLNA is fastest here.
 
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This is what I used to do on my S2.

Softwares/Apps used:
1) SwiFTP - Makes your Android device into a FTP server.
2) Pocket Cloud PC - Remotely control your PC with your Android device.
3) ES File Explorer - To access shared files on my PC.
4) MX Player - To play those files accessed by ES File Explorer.

This was a time when sometimes I used to download on my phone, sometimes on my laptop/PC. All data was stored on laptop.

I used to transfer downloaded data from my phone to the laptop by using SwiFTP to make it into a FTP server and then using Pocket Cloud PC to remotely access my laptop, access the FTP and start the data transfer.
To view the files on the PC I used the native SMB sharing and access the shared folders via ES File Explorer.
 
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